


help me know my name

by ladyzanra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode Tag, M/M, Mark of Cain, Prayer, Protective Castiel, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1347562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyzanra/pseuds/ladyzanra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You hadn’t realized how much the mark had changed you, reconfigured you into a new creature with this terrible new end. And yeah, it scares the shit out of you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	help me know my name

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the sneak preview for 9x17.

"You’re afraid," says Crowley. He's right.

You’re like a snake whose tail is almost in its mouth but not quite, like an open circuit waiting to be closed. You feel it, now that the blade has been in your hand and then taken away. You feel the part of you that is raw and gaping and longing for that completeness again, for darkness. You want to be closed off, brought together, made whole again by the blade. You want to be anger and power, a volcano, buried deep inside yourself and blinded by your own fire. That’s  _all_  you want. You hadn’t realized how much the mark had changed you, reconfigured you into a new creature with this terrible new end. And yeah, it scares the shit out of you.  
  
You’ve tortured souls in Hell and you’ve hacked your way through half the monsters in Purgatory and you’ve spent pretty much your whole life as a hunter the only way you know how — killing and learning to like the taste — and  _none_  of it, no fit of rage or violence compares to the way the blade makes you feel when you hold it.  
  
Hell had tortured you first before you’d returned the favor; Purgatory’d had the nerve to stand between you and Cas; hunting had been forced on you and then become a necessity in too many ways for you to walk away from. They’d all done something to you, given you a reason. They’d forced their way in from the outside and  _you’d_  been the one fighting back and even when you broke it was your own strength that got twisted, went off the rails. You were still in there, still at the center of yourself, because you were still suffering. You were still in pain every goddamn step of the way.  
  
The blade doesn’t give you pain. It obliterates it. The mark only makes you suffer when you’re not using it, when it’s being ignored. When you’re going against the nature of it. Against your own nature.  
  
You’re no longer your center. Except you are.  
  
It's so fucking confusing.  
  
You ditch the pool game after Crowley leaves and sit back at the bar and try to stop freaking out, try to just  _chill_. You remind yourself that this isn’t forever. You only got the mark so you could kill Abaddon. After that, obviously, you’re getting rid of it. All you’re gonna do is use it on Abaddon and not use it on anyone or anything else in the meantime. You’re good. You’re in control.  
  
But you’ve already used it on Magnus.  
  
Okay. Yeah. But he'd been asking for it. He’d been threatening Sam, for fuck's sake. He  _probably_  wasn’t even still human. You can make an exception for him. You’ll probably need to clear a path toward Abaddon, too, so that’s a few demons thrown into the mix. But that’s all, that’s the deal. After that, you’ll let the blade go, you’ll drop it.  
  
Because dropping it had been so easy the last time.  
  
Then you’re sucked into the memory again. The way you’d continued to hold on to the blade after Magnus, sans any need of it, just  _wanting_  it. Just wanting the heat and strength of it, relishing in the surge of power, when all you’d ever felt before was the opposite. You didn’t want to let it go, didn’t even know where that point was where you _could_ , where you ended and it began. It just. Felt right. That Sam even got through to you was, let’s be fucking real, a stroke of dumb luck, a sudden miraculous burst of self-control; your brother’s voice a thin streak of lightning splitting the drum-tight backdrop of red rage you were stuck in.  
  
Deep down, you’re not sure you’ll be that lucky twice. The truth is you’re already at the fringe of control, already writhing at your edges. That’s what Crowley had wanted you to remember. That’s why he’d risked bringing the blade with him, just now, hidden under his coat. He’d known you’d sense it. He’d wanted you to feel yourself almost launching yourself at him, almost try to tear him apart for it. He’d wanted you to remember how  _good_  losing control felt.  
  
And you did. Fuck.  
  
You hate Crowley so much that it actually clears your head a little, gives you something else to focus on besides your fear. Your perspective zooms out to that default distance that informs the general notion of reality. You’re suddenly almost glib about it.  _Hey, look at it this way._   _At least it’s a fucking guarantee Abaddon won’t survive this. This face off’s so far in the bag now it’s almost not fair_. That’s the important part. That’s the big picture mission here. Whatever happens after, whatever happens to you… happens.  
  
But it doesn’t have to happen the next day, which is just another grain in the gathering sand pile of days you don’t look for Abaddon.

  
\--  
  
  
Sam is not in the motel room bed next to yours when you wake up in the middle of the night, heart hammering and your body covered in a cold sweat. Sam's absence is normal, these days. You two don’t really know how to share a room anymore. But tonight the empty bed makes your heart race even faster.  
  
You take deep breaths but you can’t breathe out the sounds in your head, torn out of your dream into the waking world with you. People you know, people you love shouting your name, pleading with you, trying to get you to stop even as you furiously don’t.  
  
You think you really have killed them all. Garth, Charlie, Jody, Cas, Sam. You feel like it really is all over. The excitement lingering in you is real excitement. The thrill is still too vivid, the handle of the blade too solid in your empty hands. It wasn’t a dream, or if it was, it was only a half-dream. Somewhere, some time, you did all those things.  
  
You try to ground yourself back in reality. You stare around the room, lit faintly by the moonlight ghosting in through the window, and let it talk sense to you. Let it prove to you bit by bit that this is where you've been the entire time. You keep breathing deep until you eventually calm down.  
  
But you can't rub out the memory of the dream. You can't forget how easy it'd been to crack bone and spill blood. Can't erase the feeling of  _getting off_ on it. You're raw and empty. You're at the center of a stunning horror, you're in the eye of the storm watching the way it howls unstoppably around you, watching the all-powerful force that will soon carry you off with it. You're trapped. No one can find you here.  
  
No one can be here so deep in your own darkness with you. No one can see this like you can. But you're so shaken that you don't put up a defense, you let the truth take a full swing at you. You admit it, admit everything. You can't fight this. You can't control it. You can't  _do_  this alone.  
  
Your chest swells, you inhale shakily. You want to pace the room but you don't trust yourself to move. Actually, your legs probably wouldn't be able to hold your weight right now if you tried. Your hands as you bring them up to cover your face are trembling. Then the tears come, warm and wet against your callused palms.  
  
The name spills out of you in much the same way, not by accident and not on purpose, a reaction. A plea.  
  
“Cas.”  
  
It feels selfish. It feels wrong. You don't pray to Cas for yourself, not like this. You've never bothered him except when it was for someone else's sake, or for his own. You've never burdened his already weighed-down shoulders with your own shit. You've never had to.  _Sam_  may have given you struggle after struggle, but you've always dealt with yourself on your own.  
  
Just thinking that thought makes the crack in you widen, run deeper. Makes something in your chest squeeze and burn coldly.  
  
“Cas,” you croak, resigned to the indulgence of this because you can't stop yourself. You hate yourself but you can't--  You let your hands drop. “Cas, if you can hear me, I...”  
  
You think maybe that's enough. Maybe, if he's even listening, he can read your mind for the rest of it. Maybe he's already on his way.  
  
Maybe he's got other shit to do. Maybe he's got other stuff on his plate right now. You have no idea what he's doing right now; you haven't asked. You ignore the guilt that rolls through you and act on the sudden panic instead, the rush to make sure he  **hears**  you. The crack hits the bottom of you and you shatter, you are laid open and bare, you are more selfish than you have been with him maybe ever.  
  
_I'm afraid._  
  
You don't say it out loud. You say it louder than that.  
  
You hold your breath, like you expect him to just flap into existence next to you. You don't even remember at first that he doesn't have working wings. That even though he's no longer human, he's still technically a fallen angel. He wouldn't just show up. He couldn't.  
  
You go off on your own and get a stupid mark that gives you nightmares and then you just expect Cas to drop everything for you, to come running because you've bitten off more than you can chew, and not exactly naively. Like you yourself aren't one hundred percent to blame for this and like Cas doesn't have his own problems to deal with, which you don't even care enough about to remember. You're a fucking piece of shit.  
  
Your tears stop because you can't cry for a fucking piece of shit. Eventually, the wall repairs itself around you. You're able to get up and get dressed and get out, drive off in your car somewhere, anywhere, until there are miles between you and how much of an asshole you are.  
  
But you don't cancel the prayer. You don't tell Cas not to come. You just let it sit there uncomfortably in the background, an ugly little wallflower of shame and hope. 

  
\--   
  
  
You're in your room because your room's the only place that will tolerate you. You're lying on your back listening to angry music on your headphones that you can't quite remember putting on. You're engulfed by the music, sealed off; it knows the rhythm of your blood. You appreciate it. You and the music understand each other.  
  
You wonder when Crowley will get pissed enough to come bother you again. It's been two weeks and you know just as much about Abaddon's whereabouts now as you did before.  
  
That's the thing, though: you don't like doing nothing. You've been getting so fed up with yourself lately, it's a miracle you're able to find any sort of momentary peace at all.  
  
You haven't been thinking about it so much as you've been gradually warming up to it, the idea of just getting it the fuck over with. You feel useless when you're stalling, and that's all you're doing here. If you have other motivations besides just ganking Abaddon, well. Whatever.  
  
It's funny what a constant headache and the feeling of being increasingly coiled, cooped up inside your skin can do to you with time. Funny how crankiness erodes your fear. You're not even sure you care how Crowley will gloat the next time you see him.  
  
He's next on the list after Abaddon. You decide you really were serious about that. You really will kill him too.  
  
You don't hear the knock on the door through the music. Or maybe he doesn't knock at all.  
  
You see the top of the door swing open and you take your headphones off quickly and sit up, prepared to be irrationally outraged that Sam has for whatever reason broken the tacit agreement never to barge into your room.  
  
But it isn't Sam. It isn't Crowley, either.  
  
You take in the ugly trench coat and his hands, limp at his sides, warily. Your first thought is that you're irritated. You're irritated that he's showing up now, after almost three days of nothing, when you are about as over that desperate outburst of prayer as you possibly can be. You want to retreat, you want to be far away from him, because you are a self-sufficient person, or thing, and you don't need his help, anymore. Don't need him.  
  
He won't understand it, how you are a new creature, how it feels when the blade completes you. He doesn't understand now. There is confusion mixed with the worry on his face and it angers you. If he's confused, why the fuck doesn't he just read your mind? Why doesn't he just do that all the time?  
  
“Cas.” You get up and pick the clothes off of the floor so that you don't have to look at him. You don't know what else to say. You can't actually vocalize anything truly harsh. But you can't fake any cheerfulness, any lightness either. You have no energy for that kind of thing anymore. The room is stuffy, with its long shadows and its stale slightly trembling light.  
  
“Dean,” he says uncertainly. “I'm here. What's wrong?” You feel his eyes studying you. When you don't reply, he adds, cautious and awkward behind you, “I heard your prayer.”  
  
“Yeah, not trying to be rude or anything, but that was like, three days ago.” You keep your back to him. You throw your clothes in your drawer even though they're dirty, just so you don't have to turn around.  
  
“I'm sorry. I came as fast as I could.”  
  
“I know.” You do. You get it. You don't blame him for it. Except for that petty part of you that doesn't know what else to do with your anger. “Your wings are clipped.” You start to rearrange the clothes in the drawer.  It's hard to breathe and you feel like your veins are squeezing around you, strangling you. You are constricted bramble, you are hot-red steel. You are in a sealed coffin; you are in the desert. You've been feeling like this lately, along with the headaches. It's been getting worse. You try not to think about how the blade relieves this, how it gives you an outlet, how it lets you breathe the fire out of your system.  
  
How it is so much more welcome right now than Cas.  
  
“You said you were--” he begins.  
  
“I'm fine now,” you snap. “It was nothing. Something stupid. I'm over it. Sorry you came all the way out here.” You slam the drawer shut. You clamp your teeth and stare at the blank wall above the dresser. You hear Cas walk toward you in gentle but defiant steps. Rage flares in you, unthinking, all instinct, all animal.  
  
For a moment, you are actually going to turn around and hit him.  
  
His hand closes over your shoulder and the rage falters, subsides. Something cool and gentle spreads from where his fingers press into your skin, seeps into you. Slowly relaxing your muscles and soothing your wild blood. It might be grace, it might not. It's just Cas. It hits you all at once: this is  _Cas_. Cas, who used to be so important to you. Cas who you called, Cas who was all you had in that motel room, broken and alone in the dark.  
  
Then you're turning into his arms, wide and open and waiting for you.  
  
You press your forehead into the hard, sure jut of his collarbone, still knit whole, untouched by the wildness of your dream which had snapped it in two. There's an ache so deep in your chest that all the tears in the world couldn't get at it. You cry anyway. Because this hurts. Hurts more than you can stand and you want to stand all of it.  
  
“Why didn't you call me sooner?” Cas's voice is just the right amount of scolding, of discontent, for you to listen to him. To take him seriously.  
  
You are no longer a circuit, opened or closed. You are no longer a hand the blade's calling can easily reach, because Cas is shielding you. You have no form at all, you are just a bundle of nerves and thoughts and wounds and memories and fears and regrets reshaped in Cas's arms.  
  
“I'll keep him away from you," he whispers. “I won't let Crowley find you. We'll get rid of the mark. It will probably be extremely difficult," he adds grimly, "but we'll do it." He brings his hand to the back of your head and holds you, he tucks his chin into your hair.  
  
“Okay,” you say. 


End file.
